Today was Claire’s 50th parkrun, and someone who bear’s his share of the responsibility for Claire doing parkruns (and 10k’s and 10-milers) at all, I thought I would pop down to Hadleigh to help celebrate.
It was a glorious morning albeit rather chilly, with lovely views across the Thames estuary.
Claire was tailwalking with her Dad, dragging her “50” balloons with her, while I pushed myself hard, trying to get the pacing right – in round terms, the first third is downhill, the middle third is gently undulating, and the final third is a fairly challenging uphill, so getting the pacing right is not easy. The analysis on Radio 4’s ‘More or Less’ recently suggested that by some measures this may be the hardest parkrun in the country.
Anyway, something went right today and I knocked 50 seconds off my course PB to finish in 25:25, not bad with 110m of ascent – my running calculator says it was the equivalent of a flat 5km PB, for what that’s worth.
I then had another kilometre run to the car and back to fetch my barcode which I’d carelessly left there (you’d think I would have got the hang of this by now), and then twenty minutes or so of cheering people across the finish, before retiring to the café for a nice hot chocolate and chat.
I then changed from trail to road shoes, popped down the hill to Chalkwell on the seafront, where the sea was almost completely flat, and set off for a run of indeterminate length – both 10km and 10 miles were in my head. My legs initially felt very heavy but after about 4km they seemed much happier and I kept going past the potential 5km turn-round mark. I still felt good at 8km so decided that it was a lovely day for a half-marathon and continued further past Shoebury Ness to the remaining MOD property. On the way back, the pier seemed to linger in the distance for a very long time without getting any closer, but it was good mental practice, increasingly so as my legs tired in the last couple of kilometres.
Very happy with the morning’s running – albeit in three bits, the most running I’ve done in a day.
It was a chilly 1°C at the start of parkrun, and a warm 11° by the end of the long run.
